This is in reference to the thread about shots. I felt it was important enough to warrant its own thread.

I am friends with a wide variety of scientist and medical professional parents - about twenty different families in all - and every single one of them has chosen to vaccinate their children, feeling that the risks of the vaccinations are less than the risks, both to their children and to society at large, of not vaccinating. I've chosen to vaccinate for the same reasons.

I'm providing this link to a series of New York Times articles about diseases worldwide. Over the next few days, I'll be researching other links in support of vaccinations. Please, if this issue speaks to you, don't be afraid to post your own links - but please, make them scientific. Heartfelt appeals from stricken parents who blame a vaccine for their child's illness despite their doctors saying there's no connection - all those kinds of links do is cloud the issue. I think we all deserve facts, and we deserve to be able to figure out the biases of the people who claim to be giving them to us.

The bottom line is that each parent has to make their own decision about vaccination. The socially responsible thing to do, in my opinion and in the opinion of every scientifically-trained person I know, is to vaccinate.

This one is specifically about the lack of connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. It's from one of the websites listed above, but I felt it deserved its own place since this is one of the biggest points made by people who choose not to vaccinate.

This one is specifically about the lack of connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. It's from one of the websites listed above, but I felt it deserved its own place since this is one of the biggest points made by people who choose not to vaccinate.

I do apologize and I hate confrontation but this is the BIGGEST arguement between vax's and autisim is the mercury in it. Either you believe it or you don't and there seems to be just as many arguements on the net out there against it as there are for it, KWIM? I have seen plenty of sites and talked to many parents who have seen, read or talked to people in the medical community who say that it IS a contributing cause of the autisim spectrum. Just food for thought

This is where we have chosen to do a hair test on our children to see how much mercury is in their systems. Doing a heavy metal detox has already proven it's worth with my DH so I chose to believe in mercury causing neurological disorders in humans. Our bodies are not made to process mercury and has no idea what to do with it. It sticks around in the body and wreaks havoc, regardless of if it causes autistic syptoms in humans or not. It's that toxic and that is a known fact regardless of who says what. It's just universally known.

We need a link that shows what else is in vax's and their roll in keeping us healthy! And why are they in our vax's, how safe are they really? Especially since the FDA touted that mercury in our vax's were safe and then they changed their minds about the safety and banned them from most vax' (some still have it!). There are plenty of other questionable ingredients in vax's our beloved FDA says is "safe". Makes me wonder when they will let us all know how "safe" they are.

Let's suppose that the FDA, and other bodies studying vaccines, realized in the nineties that the mercury in certain vaccines was causing a rise in autism. What is their immediate reaction? They're going to study the problem, by testing levels of mercury and seeing revisiting issues of acceptable levels. This takes time, as all good scientific studies do.

Well, as they're studying the mercury in vaccines, a different group is studying mercury poisoning in the environment at large. They're realizing that there are an awful lot of sources of mercury that can be acquired in the environment, especially for people who eat a lot of west-coast fish. The case starts to grow, though it is still not really confirmed.

Both groups realize something independent of each other but at nearly the same time. They realize that high levels of mercury are a bad idea; and while the FDA is studying their own vaccines and saying, "That's not enough mercury to be causing this, ergo the vaccines are safe," the other group is saying, "Environmental mercury is almost enough, but the mercury in vaccines is enough to tip the balance for people who are already contaminated."

Conclusion: on their own, the vaccines were probably safe; it was only in people who had high levels of mercury before that, that the mercury in vaccines might have been sufficient to tip the scales into toxicity.

When the two groups realize this, they go through all the right channels to publish in peer-reviewed medical journals. Researchers decide that taking the mercury out of vaccines is a good public-relations move, so they do it even though most of the studies support the finding that the vaccines, in and of themselves, are not responsible for autism. Over a period of a few years, they develop vaccines with such tiny traces of mercury that you'd have to already have toxic levels in your body in order for it to have an effect at all.

Meanwhile, the people who have been hurt by the whole process see only that there is too much contradictory information. They don't see that there has been a progression towards a safer vaccine in the process, and they now distrust all vaccines because of their negative encounter with a few.

BUT - and this is the important part for mothers considering vaccination questions now, in 2006 - the scientific community did react to the concerns, study the problem, come up with a solution, and implement it. The mercury is gone from the vast majority of vaccines now given. I asked about thimerosol in the rhogham shot I had to get at 26 weeks, and discovered that Ontario's public health department made a unilateral policy decision some years ago to take all vaccines with this preservative in them off the market as soon as a new version became available. Moms in Canada don't have to worry about this - if there is a thimerosol-free version available, that's what they'll get automatically.

So, from my perspective at 39 weeks of pregnancy, I can either get scared by your stories which are possibly valid but seven and eleven years old, respectively, or I can read the more recent information, ask questions, and decide that the vaccines being offered now, to my unborn daughter, are safer than they were a few years ago.

With this game of what-if, you and I can both be right up to a point, and we can both say with confidence that the situation has improved, because concerns about toxicity have been addressed.

I have to say the majority of my information during research came straight from the CDC and VAERS website both provided by our government and are indeed pro-vax. But the cold hard numbers and statistics don't lie. You just have to research them on your own. Especially helpful is the CDC Pink book, just be prepared to download a ton of information and weed thru it.

I think the most important thing a parent can do to research this issue is to educate themselves on each childhood disease (learn the history of, the symptoms, treatment, incubation period, reported cases, anything and everything you can) and then do the same for each vaccine. This information will not be biased or made up, I mean a disease is what it is, and if you inform yourself about it you will realize that all are either not scary, and other's that may be more of a big deal like polio, you have a slim to none chance of contracting it. Just wanted to say that even the CDC admits that the chance of death and reaction to a vaccine is much greater than the chance of catching one of the diseases they are intended to prevent.

and the www.909shot.com that was mentioned above has some really good information as well, I liked how it breaks down each disease and vax, which like I said is a great way to start or continue research. Basically I studied each and every vax and disease like I was going to have a big exam, only the final test is my children's health. Good luck to anyone who is on this journey, it's a long one but one of the most important things you can do as a responsible parent. Be informed before you do anything in regards to your child.

even if the unknowns DO turn out vax free is would be 34% vax free and 65% vaxed. I would assume that being vaxed would make you MORE suseptable to the disease.

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i don't have any scientific info to quote but I do know that the risk of my child DYING from a shot is much higher than them contracting the wild disease and the very small percentage that they could die or develope a severe form or the wild disease.